


There Comes You (To Take Me In Your Arms)

by killyourstarlings



Category: The Incredibles (2004)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Sorry Not Sorry, also helen is bae all the goddamn time so expect some helen worship, he is a giant anxious man and you cannot take that away from me, headcanon: bob has had panic attacks all his life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 13:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15171626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killyourstarlings/pseuds/killyourstarlings
Summary: The Parr family return home after defeating Screenslaver, and all is well -- except Bob's stomach sits like a rock, and he stares at the bleeding light instead of sleeping because he really, really thought he would lose her this time.





	There Comes You (To Take Me In Your Arms)

 

* * *

_These people, they lie, and I don't know_

_Who to believe anymore..._

_But there comes you, to keep me safe from harm;_

_There comes you, to take me in your arms..._

\- "Just a Game" by Birdy.

* * *

If they’d been in their old house, the birds would have started singing about now.  That’s how he used to know when to give up on sleeping for the night — he’d hear the birds, and he’d sneak out of bed for a cup of coffee while everyone was still asleep.  Those weren’t the best of nights, but they were familiar.

Anything had to be better than staring at the bleeding light.

Hollow, raking movements pulsed in his lungs.  A warm yellow glow attracted his dry eyes like moths, whirring and melting at the corners with each shallow breath.  It was just enough to keep him awake, but not enough to make him feel secure against the paranoia of the dark.

They usually slept in complete darkness.  Only when they moved house would they plug up a night-light, in case the kids, uncomfortable in their newest environment, wanted to crawl into bed with them.  Truth be told, this hadn’t occurred too recently; but Helen liked to know they could follow the light, and Bob wouldn’t take this small comfort from her.

He knew that in order to sleep, he’d have to close his eyes.  But he couldn’t take his eyes off the light.  It warped around the rim of his vision, and reminded him that despite the drowning sensation, he was taking in air.  He was breathing, certainly.

Still, he felt lightheaded.  Still, he felt sick.

Everyone else had made it out okay, so it seemed.  Dash and Vi were off to bed without hesitation, visibly exhausted from the day.  Once he’d managed to pry Jack-Jack from Helen’s arms, the baby went down without a hitch.  And, after several cups of coffee and a dozen phone calls, tucking everyone in, fixing the issue he’d been having with the dishwasher, and using all her bodily power to resist it, Helen, too, laid down her head.

He fought everything he had not to wake her up right now.

She was soaked up into the mattress, body limp and relaxed, wrapped in his arms.  He couldn’t see her face, and that was bothering him — he could feel her heartbeat, though, and that was keeping him steady.  He tried to match his lungs to it, periodically, but he just couldn’t draw a good breath.  Everything in him was tight and shaky and empty, and he needed her to bring him down.  He needed her.

“Are you sleeping?”

The words came out of him like dirt being knocked out of a shoe; they’d just been sitting there, eating at him for too long.  He was quiet, motionless, waiting.

“Sort of,” came her muted reply — and his body near-collapsed at the sound of her voice.  She drew a deep, sleepy breath and lifted her face from the pillow.  “Drifting in and out.  You?”

“No,” he said through her hair, tickling his skin.  He sighed, sending auburn up like smoke signals.  “Can’t stop thinking.”

A low huff rumbled against his forearm.  “I can tell.”

His eyebrows rose.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re flattening me.”

Lips parted to respond, his gaze lowered to where his arms locked around her body.  In his stress he had, in fact, compressed her against him like paper; he relaxed his grip, allowing her to restore shape.  All in all, she didn’t seem bothered.

“Sorry,” he muttered.  The lack of strain left anxious energy bouncing through his muscles, to the point he felt that even lying still, he was in motion.  He swallowed hard, and it rang in his ears.

Freed, Helen turned in his embrace to face him.  He could only see her for what the night-light illuminated, the rest shadows — her cheek was pink from the pillow and her eyes were sleepy, but she was there, a true promise.  The silent room quieted a bit.

Through darkness he recognized her smile, soft and reassuring.  “’s okay,” she mumbled.  Her eyes narrowed knowingly.  “What are you thinking about?”

There were several answers to this.  He was thinking about whether or not they should still be in this house.  He was thinking about what dose of anxiety medication would be effective for a person of his size.  He was thinking about throwing up — a lot.  He was trying to remember if he’d eaten anything since they got home…

“Hey.”

He was thinking about how beautiful her eyes were — round and warm and focused, like the sun.  That was a little better.

Swallowing, he answered, “What if I’m not cut out for this anymore?”

Her eyes squinted, puzzling through this statement.  Fingers drifted lazily over his side, wrinkling themselves in the fabric of his shirt.

“With the kids?” she thought aloud.  Her focus fell on the collar of his shirt; her hand lifted to tuck a loose thread away.  “I’ve only heard glowing reports.  You certainly inspired something in Jack-Jack…”

A tinge of jealousy peeked out behind her arched eyebrow as she needled her fingers around the thread.  He cracked a smile, resisting the urge to gloat.

“It’s not that,” he said.  Watching her nose wrinkle in focus, he let out an anxious sigh.  “I’m talking about Supering.”

The other eyebrow bounced up.  She looked up, releasing the thread.

“What are you talking about?” she muttered incredulously, as though he had said something perfectly silly.  “You were great out there today.  It would’ve gone to hell without you there.”

“Without you, too,” he said with a shrug.

“Without both of us,” Helen clarified, and poked a finger to his chest.  “Hon, just because they wanted me does _not_ make you any less… Super.”

She twitched a smile.  He feigned one.

“I know that.  I know…” he trailed off, glancing over her shoulder, “ _that._   It’s just…  It’s not even that part of it, you know?  It’s the- the…”

It was the thunder and the rain of missiles and the fact that he lost something every time he turned his back, and powerlessness, and hundreds of people they used to know, and scars and red flaring lights and every small noise at night rousing him in a cold sweat…

“The what?”

It was the nightmares and the mornings she woke up before he did and the taste of blood, and the goddamn _scars_ , always there, always reminding him…

“Honey?”

The word curved upward with concern.  He found her eyes again.

“It’s the mentality,” he explained, remembering to take a breath.  “It’s the…”  Another breath.  “All of this, just after everything with Syndrome.  It’s… it’s wearing me down, hon.  It really is, and it never used to.  Not like this.”

She knew his meaning — she’d been there, when he was young and ever-present anxiety weighted his shoulders.  She could see it come over him, and she could bring him down from it.  It was how he knew she loved him.  It was how he knew to marry her.

But in all that time, he’d never felt this swallowed-up.  It had never held him this long.

“Well,” Helen began, and sat up on her elbow.  She ran a hand over his hair, and that felt a little better.  “That’s why I figured I’d take the reins on this one — so you wouldn’t have to carry all of that.  Obviously, that didn’t pan out, but if we-”

“It’s not _that_ ,” he said for what felt like the fifth time, because he just couldn’t seem to get it out.  “That’s not… what I mean.”

“Then tell me what you mean, Bob,” she said softly.

“I _mean_ that when I got that call saying you were in trouble, I couldn’t _breathe_.”

Her head bobbed back a bit, alarmed; her touch froze behind his ear.  This had come out rougher than he’d intended.

For a moment, nothing was said.  Helen’s lips fumbled over something at one point or another, but never to completion.  He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“When I got the call,” he continued through a rasp, “all I could think… I thought you were gonna…”

“Die?” she asked — and the word actually coming from her lips put a swell in his chest that he hadn’t expected.  They didn’t say that word.  They didn’t talk about it.  They had a safety deposit box devoted to that situation, and that was it — they didn’t _talk_ about it.

“D-die,” he got out, like spitting poison.  Her gaze was unyielding and unafraid; he felt the yellow light go muddy.  “I thought you were gonna die.”

Even as he said this, she seemed… aware.  She looked at him as though she’d known every thought he would ever think.

“I didn’t, Bob,” she reminded him, fingers cruising down his jaw.

“I know that,” he said.  His vision strained against water.  “I know, and I should be over it by now, but I still… can’t- _breathe_ …”

Her arms wrapped around him without his even realizing, and he disappeared somewhere in her shoulder, the light stifled by the dark warmth.  With every breath, his chest stretched from his body, ribs held together by one small, wiry clasp — if he took in too much air, he’d break, but he just couldn’t _feel_ it.  He couldn’t feel the oxygen; he couldn’t feel his stomach; he couldn’t feel anything but terrible, throbbing fear in his spine and soft lips on his temple and his legs tensing against the mattress…

“I didn’t know,” came the buzz of her voice in his ear.  “I’m sorry.”

He wanted to tell her not to be sorry.  He wanted to ask her what to do next.  But he was so goddamn tired and the only thing keeping him down and still was the graze of her fingernails behind his neck.

A long moment passed.  She pressed warm rows of kisses along his skin.  That was a little better.

“How about this?”

Helen drew back to look at him, and cold chills ran up his skin.  Her thumbs ran around his eyes, collecting moisture, before her hands settled to frame his face.  He nodded for her to continue, and she gave him a comforting smile.

Then her hands slid down his sides, and over, and wrapped around him.  Her legs came around either side of his waist, and then again.  She coiled her limbs around him, the way she would when he used to wake up with panic attacks — the way that held him in place and made his muscles to calm — the way that covered him in warmth, cloaked him in it.  If his whole body were to break down right now, she’d be holding him together.

That was better.  That was much better.

“I won’t let go of you until you can breathe again,” she whispered, and kissed his nose.  “I promise.”

Fresh tears came to his eyes.  He shook his head at her, completely astounded.

Then he was kissing her, and it wasn’t a decision or an instinct, but a command from somewhere deep inside him.  He was kissing her, and she pulled him tight against her and he kissed her better from there, and he kissed her until he couldn’t stand it, because for the first second since they’d been here, he was drawing a goddamn _breath_.  He kissed her until every racing thought in his mind shattered into this — into her, and having her, in this moment, now.  Nothing else existed, future or past, life or death.  Nothing else was important enough to exist.

He didn’t know how she did it — how she managed to make everything stop.  But he knew that without her, he’d surely sink headfirst into every small thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I left the theater, I've been writing nothing but angst for these two, and I figure it'll just keep coming out until I start putting it somewhere. Also some horrible genius on tumblr was talking about how scared Bob must have been after thinking Helen DIED in the first movie, then getting that phone call that she was in trouble in the second movie -- and I couldn't not-write it. So here's your punishment, random-ass-tumblr-person. Enjoy.


End file.
